A picture book pitch party on Bluesky!
One of the things that online children’s authors are missing these days is a viable pitch party, where unagented authors post their story ideas, and agents and editors can scroll through the posts to find stories that they would like to see more of. The last few pitch events on X were a misery, for several reasons that had nothing to do with the organizers and (most of) the participants. So, what is the alternative?
The social media platform Bluesky has a large kidlit community and all of the tools needed to host a great pitch party, but is lacking the number of participating agents and publishers Twitter once had. Let’s aim to change that! Staging a pitch event will add incentive for agents and publishers to migrate to Bluesky, and provide a fun community-building experience.
I am proposing a Bluesky-only #SKYPITCH event, and building momentum to make it happen.
Once we get feedback and spread the word, we can set a date to hold the event!
To be clear, expectations for our inaugural event should be for community-building, to show off the creatives who are building a fantastic presence on Bluesky—not for a life-changing flood of agent “likes.”
What would the #Skypitch event be?
To keep it clear and simple, our 1st #skypitch event will be for PICTURE BOOKS only. (We might later expand to include a broader spectrum of kidlit pitch events—Chapter Books, Middle Grade, Young Adult etc.—if things go well.)
The event itself will be like the typical pitch party authors know and love. On the selected day, authors pitch their story in a Bluesky post using the #SkyPitch hashtag! (Agented authors should include the #agented hashtag.) Agents and Editors on BlueSky might read the pitches, and like the post, inviting the author to send them the manuscript in a query. Only agents and editors should like a pitch. Feel free to reply to or repost pitches you want to support, but refrain from hitting the heart to like the pitch unless you are inviting the author to query. This isolates agent interactions for the authors and filters out engagements that aren’t requests. And reposts and replies will show off just how actively engaged users are on Bluesky!
If an agent or editor does like your post, check their submission guidelines and do your research before submitting a query! DON’T just DM an agent or editor, check to see how they would like you to submit.
You can pitch up to three picture books, but only pitch each one once. If you are an author/illustrator, you can attach an image to your pitch (or you can create a mood board as long as you credit the image creator). Bluesky has a character limit of 300, so you have to craft a tight pitch that fits the limit. You can use additional hashtags to identify your sub genre, editors and agents will look for this (#SEL= Social Emotional Learning, #NF = Nonfiction, #C= Concept, #L= Lyrical, #I= Interactive etc.).
As we get feedback and finalize the details, we will make an announcement with a date and more details. Hopefully more of the already overwhelmingly positive response comes in, and we will have a viable way forward to bring back one of the more enjoyable kidlit activities to the community!